Loved for what? Love and masculinity in the age of neoliberalism
"When it comes to compatibility between men and women, the French match on taste, the Italians match on physical chemistry, and Koreans match on 'specs' — but in the end, mating always comes down to DNA."
In a video analyzing dating entertainment shows, YouTuber Cho Seung-yeon argues that programs like "I Am Solo" and "Single's Inferno" offer a window into observing many facets of Korean society. Since the explosive rise of romance reality shows in the late 2010s, these programs have followed a formula: a new contestant is introduced into a room full of men and women to keep the dopamine flowing, and in the process, viewers' reactions become a lens through which we can glimpse popular attitudes toward relationships. Moreover, the obsession within youth culture with cultural memes like "Teto," "Egen" and "secure attachment type" reveals a longing for the "hexagonal person" — someone whose inner self and outward appearance are as flawlessly complete and finished as a mass-produced product, requiring no further refinement.
Within this context, human relationships become a form of shopping — the consumption of a romantic partner — and we now live in a world where neoliberalism has become the very yardstick of attraction. A person choosing whom to love can no longer rely on emotional criteria alone; they are compelled to factor in the calculating logic demanded by the cultural system of the present age. This element of modernity, the argument goes, can be traced to the overwhelming weight that romance now carries in the formation of social self-esteem, and to the shifting ways in which romantic love itself is deployed and performed.
According to American Christian pastor Jonathan Pokluda, in the modern dating context, people have come to believe that cultivating an attractive persona is the way to get to a long-term relationship with one person. However, the very performance of attractiveness is what has made us the insecure men and women we are today: we’ve taught ourselves to believe that people won’t be attracted to who we actually are. But our deepest selves are telling us something different: I don’t want my success in romance to hinge on how skillfully I performed a role. I want the other person to like me — for me.
How ought we to live — and how ought to we understand masculinity itself — in a performative society?
To begin with, one must undergo a transformation into a non-anxious presence — a process that requires simultaneously tending to the wounded "inner child" and practicing emotional resilience. Above all, what must accompany this process is an unshakable foundation for living, one that allows a person to affirm, again and again, that they are worthy of acceptance exactly as they are. Furthermore, to become a stable, secure presence within one's social world, one must resist the urge to seek out others as a way of filling one's own inner void or loneliness; instead, in order not to lose oneself, one must maintain a clear sense of one's own interests and desires.
Furthermore, the masculinity that this era calls for must promote a new norm: critical thinking and imagination. In Korea and Western society, this masculine ideal has moved through successive incarnations — the protector-gladiator of the 1950s and '60s, the salaryman or frontiersman of the '70s and '80s, and now the emotionally flexible entrepreneur of the present day. But according to Canadian American author David Brooks, in the age of AI, what will come to differentiate people will no longer be how smart they are, but rather their relationship to mental effort itself.
In a society that demands performance at every level, only when the revelation that men are human and not heroes becomes truly known will the world know peace.
Chang Se-myeong (semyeongchangx7@korea.ac.kr) is a student at Korea University Graduate School of International Studies, majoring in international peace and security.